Internal turmoil after father's death

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I'll admit that I'm new to this community, but I'm here seeking some help or reassurance or... something.

I'm a high functioning aspie. My father (also an aspie) died very unexpectedly last year at the age of 63. He was exceptionally healthy (fitness fanatic) and was actually biking through the Alps when he suffered a heart attack and subsequently death due to shoddy medical care. I was 30 at the time, with an excellent job, supportive boyfriend, pets and friends I adore, and generally pretty satisfied with life. But his death has blown a massive hole in me and I don't even know how to start coping.

I've always been very emotionally flat until now. The loss of grandparents, pets, and loved ones was upsetting and I'd feel a little down and maybe cry a bit but a week or so later I'd be back to normal. But my father's death has been nothing like anything I've ever experienced before. I will literally cry until I throw up, even a year later. Emotions I don't even have words for come welling up out of me with the slightest provocation. For example, commercials with cute puppies have the potential to start off a torrent of tears. My levels of anxiety and depression are so severe that I opted for medication, just to see if the "black pit of nothingness" would maybe get a little less all consuming. Even with the meds I feel unmoored and that my life is meaningless. It's been such a long time since I've felt anything but anger or pain... I just don't even know what to do. I just want to feel normal and back in control of me again.

I tried a grief counselor. She just kept saying "it's a process" or "feeling are normal" over and over again. I could never get her to understand that, for me, FEELINGS AREN'T NORMAL. I don't posses skills to cope with what I'm feeling because I don't even have words for this. I've tried reading up on grieving. thinking that if it really is a process then clearly there should be some steps or commonalities or general guidelines for how to deal with it. So far nothing has really explained what's going on or why I'm having such a hard time.

Everything in my life has suffered. My job performance is abysmal. I just can't seem to focus on anything long enough to really see a project through. My hobbies and favorite passtimes bring no joy and for the most part I've given them up. My poor boyfriend has to deal with me constantly being emotional and in a sh***y mood. And my anxiety levels will get so bad that even stopping to by gas will leave me exhausted for hours, just because of the effort it takes to build myself up to take on the most basic of tasks. If left to my own devices I'll lay in bed for hours each day, cuddling with my dog and duck and aimlessly clicking online. The medication allows me to function marginally better. I can go to the grocery store or have people over for dinner, but given the slightest provocation the tears and the sobbing and the sucking void of anguish in the center of my chest will appear again.

I was hoping you all would have some advice or suggestions or even just stories to pass on. All the NT's around me don't seem to get what I'm dealing with. I was hoping someone here might.

Through all the anxiety, depression, and downright misery you're currently suffering from, start building a little core of senselessness inside. Let it grow, and eventually it will become a part of your sadness. From then on, you can realize that this world doesn't have to make sense, that people come and go, regardless of how wonderful and present they were in your life, because that is the cyclical nature we are all a part of. Your father lived doing what he loved, and he would want you to keep giving yourself whatever meaning makes you happy.

No, the pain won't go away. Doubts will continue to arise. Memories will flood your mind with the tides of time, but take heart, for this world is absurd, existence is silly, and you're getting to experience all of it. Accept your feelings instead of rebelling against them. Continue to strive toward another day so that you can regain your strength and find those moments where you are at peace. Let the tears flow if they must, but make sure you smile a few times too, because aren't tears themselves just ridiculous? Mix it up. Make sure that regardless of the emotions you feel, there's always something to acknowledge and appreciate.

Also, I'll let you in on a little secret, just between us and every other person reading my words, and the people they tell afterwards, and so on, so forth...

Clear your throat if you feel the urge to cry. It messes up your body's rhythm and then the tears won't come out. Just in case you want to keep yourself from having a public meltdown, it's a fantastic little trick to use.

*HUGS*

Yes, I get it. In spades.

Little girls (at least, I'm guessing by post content that you're female) are tightly bonded to their daddies. Even if their daddies are dicks (which I gather yours wasn't).

Little Aspies tend to be tightly bonded to their same-neurotype family members (at least, if they're decent to each other, which I'm gathering you were).

My dad and I were two Aspies in a pod; for about six years when I was a teenager, we were pretty much each others' world entire. He died, also suddenly (also of heart issues, for that matter) four years ago just about to the day.

There were other factors involved in my case (ALL KINDS of other factors), but I completely stopped living for the first year. Quit eating, quit bathing, quit doing much with my kids other than not letting them die, QUIT LIVING. At the end of that year, although him being gone only played a part and it wouldn't have happened without the rest of the mess, I tried to kill myself and landed in the psych ward for a week.

Not saying that has to happen to you, or that it will-- there were HUGE, HUGE, HUGE amounts of other massive factors that drove that. THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY WHERE YOUR SITUATION IS GOING.

They say the first year is the hardest. Maybe so, I don't know.

Four years later, I'm alive again. I won't say that I don't miss him EVERY SINGLE DAY, because I do.

I won't say that I don't occasionally curl up in the back of a closet and scream for my daddy like a lost three-year-old, because sometimes I do. At least it mostly happens when the house is empty, and only once every two or three months around PMS time.

It isn't ever going to stop hurting. Sorry but I'm not going to s**t you about that. People say it will-- it won't.

It does hurt LESS, though, with time. And you DO learn to live with it-- and I do mean to ACTUALLY LIVE again, not just stumble through days trying not to look like a zombie.

BuyerBeware summarises it very well. I lost my brother at 22 and my best friend at 27. You never actually get over it, but time has a healing affect. At times you wonder why it wasn't you instead and then you start feeling guilty about it. Ultimately it turns you into a better person for it having happened and you start to appreciate the people that you have around you.

I guess you're looking for "How To Make It Go Away."

I don't know. It does not go away, not entirely and not forever (I'm sitting here listening to my dad's old CDs and crying; tomorrow is the 4-year mark according to the death certificate, and if I knew where to get some marijuana I'd probably roll a joint and smoke it even though I haven't touched the stuff in better than ten years, just because he loved it).

How do you stuff it long enough to go to work?? I don't know that either-- I'm a SAHM; I tend to slink out of the grocery store and cry in my car (or just stay at home-- other than fresh fruit and veggies in the cold months, milk, and cigarettes, we could eat just fine if I didn't leave the house for months).

When I was staying with my husband's folks and couldn't feel anything without upsetting his dad, I used to just tell myself that it didn't matter, that I was a 'tard and he was a 'tard and nobody gave a s**t anyway. It kept everything stuffed down, but I don't recommend that approach, because now I am a hateful and bitter person because of it.

I like to tell stories, or look at myself or my kids for the ways in which they are similar to him, or do funny things that he did. These things make me laugh, which bothers people less than crying.

I learned to manually drag my focus back to where the people around me needed it to be. "These dishes have to be done now." "This floor has to be mopped now." I had to stay busy ALL THE TIME to do it, and I learned not to allow time to focus on the hurt and the memories and the rage that kept wanting to intrude.

I don't recommend ALL of that approach, for the same reason that I don't recommend "nobody cares." You can't run forever. You might HAVE to run from it while you're at work, but then you set aside some time in the evening or whatever, and that's when you scream, cry, howl, kick things, talk to him, talk about him, write it all down in a notebook, whatever.